


Visions of Futures Passed

by Omorka



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Mind Meld, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:18:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones runs into Spock Prime while patching up Vulcan refugees, and gets a glimpse of how his future might have gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions of Futures Passed

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was for Bones/Spock Prime alone, but Kirk would not get out of the fic, which is probably why it's not as explicit as it could be, either.

The refugees wandering silently around the hangar unnerved McCoy. He'd seen that look before, the stunned look of enormous trauma - in a dozen ERs, on friends, on colleagues, on perfect strangers. But here, it was masked. Every green-tinged face was carefully blank, every spine rigid, even if the blood-flows of rage and despair waxed and waned right under the skin.

Didn't matter. He wasn't the psychologist; he was here to treat the injured and the ill. He'd just applied a syntheskin bandage and a splint to a kid, a girl who looked maybe thirteen, who'd fallen and gashed up her ankle in her hurry to get in a planet-to-station shuttle. She had the same rigid mask as everyone else, but there were tear-tracks marked in dust on her face. She'd lost her control at least once. He'd found a washcloth for her, and she'd thanked him very politely. It had almost made _him_ cry.

He was on his way back to the medstation kiosk when a voice stopped him, deep and cracked with age. "Dr. McCoy."

He turned around. Even craggy and changed by the meddling-in-space-and-time crap he didn't really understand, he recognized the elderly Vulcan. "Mr. Spock, I presume?"

"Indeed, you are correct." He took another step towards him. "And it is most fortunate that I have found you here. It would be improper for me to have visited with Jim and my other self without also paying you the same courtesy."

Bones met the Vulcan's dark gaze, then glanced away. "It's . . . okay. I know you and that other Jim Kirk had - something special. You just want this universe's Spock to have the same with mine." He winced at that last word; working out his exact feelings for Jim had never been high on his priority list. He remembered a dozen kisses, a handful of gropings in the dark, but all under the protective blanket of an alcohol haze on both sides. What they each remembered in the morning, they pretended they didn't. He had no right to be possessive, and truth be told, he didn't want to be. It was a Hell of a rebound, but maybe that was all it had ever been.

"You misunderstand me, Doctor." Was that sorrow in the old man's eyes? "Jim is, always has been, and always will be, my friend. I would be speaking an untruth if I said he was not my closest one. But he is not the _only_ one." He held out one hand; Bones hesitated, then took it. "What was past in my universe is future in this one. If you are agreeable, Doctor, I have given Jim a glimpse of what-was and what-might-be. It would be . . . unfair, not to do the same for you."

"I don't like the idea of playing God," Bones started, but stopped. He couldn't name a single change in the pointy-eared elder's face, but he was sure he was being laughed at.

"You already decide who lives and who dies on a regular basis, Doctor," Spock said dryly. "A hint of precognition may help you save lives, later."

"Yours," Bones said, hesitantly. Spock nodded and raised an eyebrow, as if he were waiting.

"Jim's," he whispered, eyes wide. Spock nodded again, and lifted his hand. Bones swallowed, nodded back, and closed his eyes.

Flashes of memory shot through him like lightning. _Jim on a medical bunk, over and over; Spock nearly as many times. A man in a fur vest, with a mane of dark hair and a kind of magnetism that glued him to the floor. A cross between an amoeba and a giant pizza. Growing old, retiring, being promoted off the ship._

_The man in the vest again, older and grayer but wilder. Jim's son. Spock heading to the engine room, and him trying to bar the way -_

_**Spock in his mind, in him, part of him.** Much more than this touching of thoughts, intimate as it was; two souls blended in his nerves like salt and water._ He felt his body gasping at that, but it was far less real than the memory.

_Jim coming to him, and him speaking in a voice half him, half Spock._

_Him needing Jim with his own need and Spock's combined, and Jim finally understanding, and making love to them both in the one body. Three souls, one searing flesh._

_A Vulcan priestess in robes, carefully disentangling Spock's soul from his own, and the vast emptiness it left in him._

_The news of Kirk's disappearance, and Spock coming to him; the two of them weeping openly in each other's arms, and comforting each other as lovers would._

The touch at his temple withdrew, and the memories faded into the background. Bones gulped for air and looked at the - no, at Spock, at the man who had loved his other-self so deeply he'd entrusted the core of his being to him.

"I don't know if I'm good enough to be worthy of that," he murmured, still half-overwhelmed.

"None of us were ever worthy of what we had together," Spock said, his voice deeper than before. "The universe was infinitely generous, with us."

"I hope this one will be half so nice about it." Bones hesitated, then put one hand on the old Vulcan's shoulder. "Does - our Spock know about that?"

"Not as you and Jim do." Spock raised an eyebrow. "I am being careless about paradox, but I hope I am not being foolhardy."

"I suppose that makes sense." He glanced into Spock's eyes again. "I'm dead when you come from, aren't I."

"Yes." There; that was definitely a flinch. "I did not show you your funeral. Suffice it to say that it was well-attended, and you were deeply mourned."

"Good to know." Bones grinned. "Then - it's good to see you again, Mr. Spock." He drew the old man into a bear hug. The echo of the other self, ferried through the Vulcan's mind, that now sat in his skull wanted to pound him on the back, but that seemed undignified in front of the other refugees.

"It is, indeed." Spock turned and kissed him, carefully. Bones threw himself into the kiss, flickers of that other mind moving on the other side of the skin contact. So much for dignity.

Slowly, reluctantly, Spock let him go. "You have other patients who need you more than I. I apologize for the emotional display."

Bones shook his head, a smirk spreading across his lips. "It's okay. I - we, Jim and I - have a lifetime to get you to do that in public again."

"A challenge I expect you to pursue with tenacity, Dr. McCoy." Spock raised his hand in the familiar salute. "Live long and prosper."

"Working on it." Bones returned the salute with some slight difficulty, and headed off towards the kiosk again. Images of tan and olive skin moving next to him danced in his mind, memories that weren't his and an imagination that was, combining into something he hoped could mold a future out of.


End file.
